About

www.jeremyirons.net is not owned or updated by Jeremy Irons.
No copyright infringement is intended by the use of any of the photos, articles, or other information on this website. All articles, photos, audio clips and video belong to their rightful owners.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Click HERE for audio of Jeremy Irons, Sinead Cusack and Rupert Evans reading The Poetry of the Great War. The actors read Josephine Hart’s programme featuring the work of Owen, Yeats, Sassoon and many others. Introduced by Francine Stock.
__________________________________________________________________________________________

Join Children & the Arts at Holy Trinity for their sixth annual carol concert for a festive evening with special guests Julie Walters, Jeremy Irons, Emilia Fox, Brian Blessed, John Suchet, Laura van der Heijden and Amore. Collegium Musicum of London also perform.

The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts champions the power of the arts to transform the lives of disadvantaged children throughout the UK. Since 2006 they have worked with over 100,000 children and have ambitious plans to build on this in future.

Christmas by John Betjeman

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
‘The church looks nice’ on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says ‘Merry Christmas to you all’.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children’s hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare –
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

We are delighted to announce that renowned British Actor Jeremy Irons has joined our fantastic line up of guests at this year’s Carol Concert.

Buy tickets HERE – (Very limited seating still available as of 29 November)

Jeremy, an Ambassador for Children & the Arts will be joining Julie Walters, Emilia Fox, Brian Blessed, John Suchet, Amore, Laura van der Heijden and The Collegium Musicum of London Chamber Choir who will all be delivering a Christmas reading or live music performance at the concert on Monday 10 December at Holy Trinity Church in Sloane Square.

Doors to the church open at 7pm and the performance will begin at 7.15pm. Delicious mulled wine and warm mince pies will be sold outside the church courtesy of Partridges in Sloane Square so make sure you get there early!

As the audio quality is low, this is best listened to through headphones with the volume turned up high……Click on the play arrow below to listen. Click on the volume/speaker icon at the left of the audio player to increase the volume in the audio player module. The recording is approximately 1 hour in length.

“The Donmar Warehouse is quite a small theater.The five actors were sitting on chairs in a row. They read excerpts from Milton’s Paradise Lost, Books 1 and 9. Jeremy read the part of Satan. The other parts were of Adam and Eve and a Narrator. The fifth woman talked about Milton at the beginning (a bit more than 17 minutes).

At the evening performance, the theater was nearly full. The evening performance was video-recorded for Josephine Hart, who was not there. The lady who recorded it said that Hart might share it on her homepage, but there is no guarantee.”

———————————————————————————————-

A photo of Jeremy in Covent Garden on Tuesday 31 May 2011 – the day of his Poetry Week performance. [Photo petra eujane ]

———————————————————————————————–

Sadly, on Thursday 2 June 2011, Josephine Hart lost her battle with cancer and passed away at the age of 67. Read more in the London Evening Standard.

————————————————————————————————

As part of the CD compilation “Words That Burn” by Josephine Hart, there is a recording of Jeremy Irons, Felicity Kendal, Emilia Fox and Greg Wise reading extracts of John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, similar to what was performed at Donmar Warehouse.

Jeremy also read the part of Satan in ‘Paradise Lost’ for a BBC Radio 4 production of the Josephine Hart Poetry Programme on 20 April 2008. In that performance, extracts from John Milton’s great Christian epic ‘Paradise Lost’ are read by Jeremy Irons (Satan), Felicity Kendal (narrator), Greg Wise (Adam) and Emilia Fox (Eve).

Jeremy Irons will be a reader on Tuesday 31 May and Max Irons will be a reader on Thursday 2 June.

Following the success of her readings for the T.S. Eliot Festival in 2009, Josephine Hart makes a welcome return to the Donmar to produce and direct a week of poetry featuring a series of special readings with some of the country’s leading actors. She will devote each performance to the works of one or two poets, introducing and setting their poems in the context of their life. “The idea is simple,” Hart says, “an understanding of the life and philosophy of the poet illuminates the poetry and therefore makes the experience of reading or listening to each poem more intense.”